176. The Australian delegation joins with others in expressing congratulations to our President on his appointment, and good wishes to him during his term of service in this high office. We welcome the choice of an African as President of the General Assembly. The Assembly, by its choice, and our distinguished President by his acceptance of office, have given visible witness to the place that Africa occupies today in world affairs and the part that its leaders are now taking and are capable of taking in the coming years in the fulfilment of human destiny.
177. And while expressing congratulations to you. Sir, on your office, I should like to take the opportunity of expressing a wish on behalf of my delegation that the Secretary-General may have an early improvement of health in order to be able to join with you in your labours.
178. I should like also to join in the words of welcome to the three new Members — Malawi, Malta and Zambia. We also greet them as fellow members of the Commonwealth of Nations, and we look forward to close and friendly association with them in both the United Nations and the Commonwealth in working for the common good.
179. May I also make a brief reference to the death, announced on the first day of the Assembly, of Mr. Arkady Sobolev. I remember him well as a member of the delegation of the Soviet Union at the San Francisco Conference and at subsequent meetings, and later as the first Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations in charge of Security Council Affairs. Mr. Sobolev has a notable place among those delegates of all nations who worked to bring the United Nations into being and to establish it. And although in all frankness I doubt whether I was ever on the same side as he in any argument, I should like to honour his memory and his services to the United Nations.
180. When I speak from the rostrum of the General Assembly, I am interrupted by many memories — memories of the San Francisco Conference, the Executive Committee, the Preparatory Commission, the Headquarters Commission, the first General Assembly, the first Security Council, the hopeful but doomed Atomic Energy Commission of 1946, and many other councils and committees now forgotten. Returning to the United Nations after a long absence, one sees many changes. Outwardly it is all much more magnificent, much bigger, much more crowded, much more highly organized, and all that sort of thing can be readily seen. There are, however, some less clearly perceptible changes.
181. Like all institutions, the United Nations has added to its written constitution various conventions and usages developed in practice. The text of the Charter has not been revised, but it has been interpreted, and the interpretations have been more often political than juridical. Today, the document does not mean exactly what it meant in the first year after it was drafted. This is in the nature of things, and I do not say whether it is good or bad. I would venture the opinion, however, that political interpretations of documents usually mean an attempt to stretch their meaning, and this approach often leads to a tendency to examine the Charter to see whether it stops us from doing something; and, if it does, to see if we can stretch a clause or two in the hope of finding a way through. In looking to see whether the Charter stops us from doing something, are we today perhaps giving less attention than we ought to give to the fact that the Charter also requires us to do certain things? The Charter places obligations on us.
182. The Charter itself uses the word "obligations" more than once. It is a condition of membership that Members "shall fulfil in good faith the obligations assumed by them in accordance with the ... Charter". It is a condition of the entry of new Members that they accept the obligations contained in the Charter and, in the judgement of the Organization, "are able and willing to carry out these obligations". And the obligation which any of us accepts is something that we have undertaken to do and are obliged to do at the risk of being false to our own promises,
183. All Members are deeply concerned at the moment —and, in my view, very rightly concerned — because in several parts of the world there is military strife and bloodshed. Nowhere is this more evident than in South-East Asia, an area of great concern to my own country. Before we start seeking the reason for this in the failure or the imperfection of the Organization in its peace-keeping role, let us face frankly the fact that several of these situations would never have occurred, and many of them would disappear immediately, if only individual Members of the United Nations would honour their obligations, such as the obligations to settle disputes by peaceful means, to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial or political independence of any State, to refrain from giving assistance to any State against which the United Nations is taking preventive or enforcement action.
184. These are not obligations placed on the United Nations as an Organization, or on any of the organs of the United Nations; they are obligations placed on each individual Member State. Whatever faults we may see in the collective security system of the United Nations, and whatever we may choose to say about the Security Council and the General Assembly, do not let us lay this fault at their door. It is the failure of Members to honour their own obligations — a matter initially in the sovereign control of each of them — that creates the danger, and we will be avoiding the basic issue if we start talking about improving peace-keeping machinery before each Member individually faces up to the basic cause of the breakdown in peace.
185. I propose to speak today only of the problems of the maintenance and restoration of international peace and security, including peace-keeping in the sense in which we have come to use that word in recent years. The views of the Australian delegation on the wide variety of other subjects that await our attention will be expressed when the appropriate items on the agenda are reached.
186. Today, at this very moment, as we sit here and as I speak, fear still casts its shadow over the whole world. Force and the threat of force are still being use to advance national policies. A substantial part of the resources of the world are still diverted to armaments. We still cannot get on with the greater tasks that await us because it is necessary to take defence measures, and we still cannot co-operate fully with each other in peaceful enterprises because there is good reason to prepare for the possibility of war with each other. Men, women and children are being killed at this moment in military operations. These ugly facts cannot be sponged away with words or obliterated by hope.
187. Furthermore, the work of this session of the General Assembly has been held up in a disheartening fashion by basic disagreement on peace-keeping arrangements. Although the Australian view on the application of Article 19 is clear and firm, and we think that this should be settled as an issue concerning solely the authority of the General Assembly in financial matters, yet we can see that, behind the question of arrears in payments, lies a division of purpose and opinion about the purposes and procedures and, indeed, about the very meaning of peacekeeping. Unless that question of peace-keeping can be solved, not only the work of the General Assembly but the whole future of the United Nations itself could be jeopardized.
188. So peace-keeping, I submit, is a vital issue in itself, and it also lies behind the current crisis in this Assembly. We do not expect that it will be possible to reach any quick and easy agreement about these fundamental questions. The Australian delegation does not press for an understanding before we attempt to overcome the Article 19 situation. We would hope, rather, that close and careful conslderation will be given to the matter in all its aspects, and that proposals will be prepared for the consideration of Members before the twentieth session meets. My present purpose here today is to try to indicate some of the problems to be overcome before we meet again, rather than to advocate the terms of any particular solution of these problems.
189. As I see the matter, the United Nations not only has to resolve a question concerning the relationships between the General Assembly and the Security Council in the tasks of restoring and maintaining international peace, but also has to re-examine the whole question of how to improve the prospects of peace in the world. We are not concerned only with the position of the great Powers, but also with the need for all Powers, great, middle-sized and small, to play a useful part.
190. We should also realize that we shall not see the perfect performance of their obligations by all Members if we continue in a situation in which those who do keep their obligations suffer by so doing, because the peace-keeping machinery of the United Nations is not in working order. You will recall that the machinery was devised, in part, to assist Members to honour their obligations without suffering disadvantage at the hands of those who did not honour their obligations. When the peace-keeping system does not work, it becomes difficult and at times almost impossible for a Member State which is in danger to observe the Charter and to survive.
191. The United Nations machinery for collective security was devised to deal promptly and effectively with breaches of the peace or threatened breaches of the peace, either on the part of a Member acting in disregard of its obligations or on the part of a State that had never accepted such obligations. The Charter did this by seeking to establish a process of peaceful settlement of disputes and, if that process failed, or a breach of the peace or an act of aggression occurred without any prior period of discussion or any prior attempts at settlement, a system of enforcement. This machinery of peaceful settlement and enforcement has not worked effectively in many cases. One obvious reason is that all Members have not met their obligations in respect of peaceful settlement; another reason is that great-Power unanimity, which was at the heart of the enforcement system, has been lacking. But I do not think that that is the whole of the story.
192. First, let us look more closely at the unanimity rule, and the special position given to the great Powers by the Charter. It was always recognized, right from the start, that the collective security system of the United Nations could not stop a war between the great Powers themselves, if one of the great Powers was bent on war. The reality is that, since the Charter was signed, an uneasy peace among the great Powers has been achieved, and another world war has hitherto been avoided by old-fashioned methods of power politics; and I see no sign of the early replacement of those methods. I would also suggest that in some parts of the world today an uneasy peace is being kept by one or other of the great Powers acting on its own. Where there is unrepressed conflict in the world, one mostly finds that one element in the situation is that the great Powers have either supported different sides in the local argument, or that one or other of them is content to see the argument go on so long as it is to the discomfiture of the other great Power, In short, at times, the great Powers have been "peacekeepers on opposite sides".
193. This position of the great Powers is not simply a position created from them by the terms of the United Nations Charter. It is part of the political reality of the world today. We cannot keep peace against the great Powers. We cannot keep peace without them. So, basically, I cannot respond readily to any proposal that ignores the reality of the existence of the great Powers, or limits them in the exercise of their primary responsibility.
194. What we do seek is some readiness on the part of the great Powers to dedicate themselves to serve a common Interest, overriding a narrow national interest, and to shape their conduct on the principles and the purposes of the Charter. At a time when so many of the smaller Powers have not kept their obligations under the Charter, I am. certainly not going to join in the popular sport of lecturing the great Powers on their morals. I wonder, however, if there is a role for the General Assembly in assisting them to keep their consciences tender, and to see their duty to humanity more clearly. Are there ways in which the General Assembly, under Article 11, can make the voice of the world heard more effectively and the pressure of world opinion felt more immediately? How can we assist the great Powers, without departing from reality, to remember at all times that the "primary responsibility" to which Article 24 refers was conferred on the Security Council by the Members, and that in doing so the Members agreed "that in carrying out its duties under this responsibility the Security Council acts on their behalf". Broadly, that is one of the areas that is suggested for study before we meet again.
195. The next desirable outcome is for the Security Council to act promptly and effectively to check any breach of the peace. In fact, it has seldom done so. The consequential question is whether, when the Security CounciL is unable to handle a dangerous situation, the General Assembly could take up the running and, if it did so, by what procedures and with what agencies.
196. One of the major difficulties, to which several Members have drawn attention, is the gap in peacekeeping arrangements revealed by the absence of any United Nations force immediately available on the spot either to discharge the functions of a police force through the deterrent effect of its presence or to check the disturbance of the peace by military action as soon as the peace is disturbed. Of course, there are attendant problems in raising such forces, financing them, controlling them and directing their operations.
197. At present, some of this police duty is being done, for better or for worse, by the great Powers, using their own national forces. One can understand the desire of small nations to replace a national force by an international force, and to take measures to enable all or several Members to participate in making the decisions about the employment of this police force, instead of leaving it to the self-will of one. The practical issue might be stated as a contrast between a self-appointed but strong policeman, and a policeman of unknown strength controlled by an unknown authority.
198. We have to see the reality of a world in which power is still the deciding factor in international affairs, and where power still cannot be successfully marshalled and controlled by any international agency. Those who do not like that reality are necessarily called to bend their minds to the problem of how best to replace national by international peace-keeping forces; at the same time, they should try to find ways whereby all Members can he associated within the machinery of the United Nations and with the task of maintaining the peace and sharing the burden both of material expense and decision-making. As I understand this line of thought, it necessarily means a sharing of responsibility, and to that extent a variation in the emphasis given up to date to the responsibility of the great Powers.
199. The central objection to the use of a national force for peace-keeping is that the force is necessarily disposed and used according to the will of the nation that maintains it, and the possessor of power decides for whom and against whom he will act, and even whether he will act at all. This becomes a much more critical question in those regions where newly emerged nations are struggling to establish themselves on a firm and las ting foundation and to maintain their independence, their internal political stability and their territorial integrity, than it is in more stable regions, where nations able to make a significant contribution to defence have joined in regional arrangements for their security.
200. The Charter, you will recall, tends to leave the task of emergency defence to Members themselves. It was recognized at the time of the framing of the Charter that the Security Council might not be able to act speedily enough, or at all. Article 51 therefore provides that, until the Security Council has taken measures to maintain international peace and security in the event of an armed attack against a Member State, Members may take measures in their own self-defence, either individually or collectively. This arrangement may work in many situations.
201. The Australian position has been to join in regional arrangements for mutual defence and to maintain our own forces in order to meet any danger that directly threatens us. We can appreciate, however, that this method of preparing to meet an emergency may not work in the case of newly independent countries, which have limited forces of their own and which are unwilling to align themselves with allies in regional arrangements, but which nevertheless do become involved in factional strife or do suffer attack from their neighbours, I can appreciate the reasons why such countries would prefer to see their emergency defence undertaken by an international force rather than by any single great Power, but I suggest that such nations have to recognize that they cannot have total independence, to the point of excluding any form of outside aid, and at the same time hope to have total security.
202. If the use of national peace-keeping forces is to be rejected, and if the Security Council cannot be relied on to produce international peace-keeping forces, can a solution be found by giving a greater measure of responsibility to the General Assembly? If we take that course, we have to make sure that the General Assembly will in practice be able to discharge its responsibility. I entertain some doubts.
203. If the inaction of the Security Council is due to political conflict among the great Powers, we can be sure that the same political conflicts will be carried into the General Assembly, of which the great Powers themselves are Members, and in which they can count on their influence. It is also open to question whether one can have greater confidence in the prospective decision of the General Assembly than in the prospective decision of the Security Council. Yet we cannot afford to let such serious matters — matters of life and death — rest where they are if the Security Council is incapable of handling them.
204. Thus a further problem to be resolved concerns the conditions under which a matter which the Security Council has failed to handle can be handled by the General Assembly, and what methods are to be used by the General Assembly. All this, of course, is based on the view that the Security Council has the primary responsibility, but not the exclusive responsibility—a point which seems to us to be made clear beyond dispute in Article 24.
205. Another argument for re-examining the role of the General Assembly lies in the inapplicability of the present collective security system to some of the disturbances of the peace that we see in the world today. The framers of the Charter did not foresee all the contingencies that might arise. There are dangerous activities of a kind that are not fully covered by the provisions of the Charter on peaceful settlement and enforcement, and even if they are covered by the document, are likely to elude the range of feasible action.
206. I am much attracted to the suggestion of the representative of Brazil [1289th meeting] that peacekeeping operations are a new concept notfully covered by Chapters VI and VII of the Charter and, assuming the revision of the Charter became possible, might deserve a new chapter on their own. If so, what would we put into such a chapter?
207. We would probably want to put into it some provision for a peace-keeping force which could act without taking sides in a dispute; or, in those situations in which armed action arises without a discernible dispute, a force that would act without favouring any cause except that of stopping men from killing or threatening each other. The San Francisco Conference did not accept the idea of a permanent international police force, but experience of sporadic troubles in many places has led more Members to think of the need for an international stand-by force that will be non-partisan, adequate, effective and immediately available.
208. Over recent years, in a number of situations, rather different from those foreseen by the framers of the Charter, the United Nations has setup special forces of its own, under United Nations command responsible to the Secretary-General, financed by- contributions from all Members, the rate of contribution being imposed by decision of the General Assembly. I may add that the Australian position throughout has been to support such United Nations forces.
209. My Government is studying with interest various suggestions that have been made to improve and formalize arrangements of this kind, and to repose greater authority In the General Assembly. Although one can foresee some difficulties — and speaking frankly for ourselves, we would not wish to forgo the right of individual or collective self-defence in an emergency — we can appreciate that there is a case for further study of the suggestions. We can also appreciate that these arrangements are of a kind totally different from those proposed in Articles 43 and 45 of the Charter, and are intended to meet situations of a kind different from those intended to be covered by those Articles.
210. We would also probably want to put into the new chapter some provisions that would assist the General Assembly either to act as the tender conscience of the United Nations or to bring the force of world opinion to bear on the peace-breaker. It would be a chapter providing means for physical restraint and moral condemnation, both promptly applied without partisanship and according to established principles. Whether the new chapter should propose some new conciliation procedures for bringing about a settlement, and whether such new procedures are needed, might also be studied.
211. This somewhat incomplete discussion of a very great subject will, I trust, show that I share the belief that a great creative effort has to be made to make the United Nations more effective in the maintenance and restoration of international peace. I do want to stress, however, that we cannot climb to heaven on a ladder of words. We have to deal with a political situation.
212. The basic necessity for peace is that all Members fulfil their obligations under the Charter.
213. The reality is that peace cannot be kept in disputes between the great Powers, and so long as there is conflict between the great Powers there will be conflict in the world, and there will be conflict over the processes of peace-keeping.
214. Unless Members of the General Assembly are prepared to act on behalf of the general body of Members and to serve a common interest, and not to act on their own behalf and to serve their own interest individually, their record in peace-keeping will be little, if at all, better than that of the Security Council. Are we entitled to have faith that the votes of the General Assembly will be at all times wise, lofty and untarnished by group or national partisanship? Unless we have that faith, how good will be the effect of the reforms we plan and hope to make? We have to work hard at this problem, but much of the work has to be done, not on the machinery, but on ourselves.